Herald view: The long, hard battle ahead to tackle obesity

Source: Herald Scotland

Date: 13-December-2017

Last year 12.4 per cent of the children starting school in Scotland had a body mass index putting them at risk of being overweight; 10.5 per cent were at risk of being obese. And, slowly but surely, the situation is getting worse.

The extent of the slow creep of the problem has been underlined by the latest figures from the NHS, which show that 76.1 per cent of primary one youngsters were assessed as having a healthy body weight in 2016-17, which is down from 77.1 per cent in 2007-08. Over the same period, the proportion of children at risk of being overweight rose to 12.4 per cent from 11.9 per cent; the percentage at risk of being obese was also up from 9.2 per cent to 10.5 per cent.

In response, the Scottish Government is developing a new strategy to tackle the problem, and has already come up with ideas, such as The Daily Mile scheme – which urges employers to encourage workers to take a break and walk a mile a day to improve their health.

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